Place gender at centre of climate policies in India

The level of engagement with gendered vulnerability and adaptive capacity is uneven. This must change

India has placed women-led development and climate as strong pillars in its G20 presidency. However, the level of engagement with gendered vulnerability and adaptive capacity is uneven. India’s state-level actions plans on climate change (SAPCCs) mention different modes of mainstreaming. These, however, report existing development projects aimed at women, rather than a reconsideration of existing policies to make them transformative.

Only 16 out of 28 state-level actions plans on climate change mention gender. (AFP)

Only 16 out of 28 SAPCCs mention gender. Most policies tend to frame women as victims of the climate crisis without recognition of their contribution to adaptive capacities. Ambika Vishwanath, director of the Kubernein Initiative, says, “From our existing research, it is clear that knowledge and intelligence on gender are missing in many climate action plans. With minimal integration, the gender lens can be put into policymaking. From research to finance and executions, an intersectional gender lens needs to be included.”

All SAPCCs view gender through the binaries of male/female-led households, masking intra-household heterogeneity, relational gender dynamics and changing masculinities. Empirical support in the form of gender-disaggregated data is lacking in all reports, and they depend largely on anecdotal accounts.

Gender is narrowly recognised in most SAPCCs, but the exceptions are Uttarakhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and to some extent, Tripura, and Gujarat.

Climate impacts on health, including increased exposures to heat, poor air quality, extreme weather events, altered vector-borne disease transmission, reduced water quality, and decreased food security, affect men and women differently due to biological, socioeconomic, and cultural factors. Rapid environmental changes threaten to widen existing gender-based health disparities. The integration of a gendered perspective into climate, development, and disaster risk reduction policy frameworks can decrease negative health outcomes. Modifying climate risks requires multi-sector coordination, improvement in data acquisition, monitoring of gender-specific targets, and equitable stakeholder engagement.

India ranks 131 on the Gender Inequality Index. This highlights how women and children keep getting disproportionate poor treatment. More frequent extreme weather events have led to escalating threats against women and girls. Poverty is exacerbated by sudden economic stress, and societal inequality often traps women with abusive partners or other family members because they have nowhere else to go, and cannot rely on authorities for help.

Evidence is clear that air pollution is linked to higher rates of miscarriages, pregnancy complications, and stillbirths, affecting women’s reproductive health. Tanushree Ganguly, an air quality researcher at the Council of Energy, Environment and Water, and her collaborators examined 102 air cleaning plans for Indian cities. She pointed out that though India’s National Clean Air Programme refers to the impact of indoor pollution on women and children, the city-level plans do not explicitly look at gender.

As climate events increase the incidence of flooding, women in Bihar are becoming more vulnerable to violence and trafficking. Further, women who do the majority of drudge work in the economically and environmentally fragile Hindu Kush Himalayan region, are disproportionately impacted by the effects of the climate crisis.

The feminisation of environmental migration is underway in South Asia, but governments are slow to recognise the role of the climate crisis, and there’s no policy action. South Asian women remain underrepresented. We need to act now to safeguard their lives and livelihoods.

lalita.panicker@hindustantimes.com

The views expressed are personal